


and i want you to be the voice of mine

by kimaracretak



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Bloodplay, F/F, Masturbation, Outdoor Sex, Ritual Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, The Grey Hunt, dubcon elements, forests that probably want to eat you, the multiple nuances of what it means to be a human sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-09 00:20:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11092986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: (i throw myself into all the demons / i cast myself into the wild hunt): Vex's right hand trails down her cheek, her neck, past the scars of Sylas' teeth to cover Cassandra's heart. "And am I to kill you then, Lady Cassandra? Return you to the earth that would swallow your lineage whole? I can't imagine you in a crypt, somehow." She trails off, her eyes flickering away from Cassandra's gaze for a moment, and there is no relief in their absence. "Or is it just about the Hunt?" Vex asks, suddenly sharper. "Shall I run and make you run until the demons behind us no longer draw breath?"Or; The one where the Grey Hunt is about an entirely different sort of monster in the forests





	and i want you to be the voice of mine

**Author's Note:**

> title from xandria, 'sisters of the light', summary quote from therion, 'the wild hunt'
> 
> what grey hunt canon i started writing this in like november

_is it too much for you, too soon?_

 

"Cassandra," Vex says slowly, on a morning that's so quiet she almost doesn't feel guilty for the way she's draped over the couch in Whitestone's library. "Cassandra, what, precisely, _is_ the Grey Hunt?"

Cassandra makes a soft, startled noise and her hand stills atop her paperwork, ink dark as blood beginning to pool under the nib of her pen. "The Grey — Surely my brother's told you, by now?" Her voice is much steadier than she feels it has any right to be. "If he cared enough to name you..."

Vex laughs, but something in Cassandra's voice must have caught her attention because she sets her book aside and wriggles upright. "He's not one for talking about Whitestone, really. I just want to know what I'm supposed to hunt." Her eyes are dark and sparkling, and Cassandra thinks for a moment she might drown there before she has the chance to say anything else.

She drops her gaze back to her desk, sets her pen down with shaking fingers and watches the ink seep slowly into her supply orders, dark as Vex's eyes. "Me," she says, and she can hardly hear herself over the roaring of the forest's winds in her ears. Cassandra stands up, crosses the room to kneel in front of Vex as if she's already surrendered her body to the Hunt. Still her voice has all of Whitestone's strength when she says, "You're chasing me, my lady."

"Oh," Vex says breathlessly, and when she leans down to grasp Cassandra's chin with slender fingers Cassandra tips her head up, bares her throat to the excitement Vex can't can't quite hide behind horror. "I didn't know — Percy didn't say — Cass, I _can't_ —"

Cassandra reaches up and grips Vex's knees, feels the pounding of Vex's pulse under her skin. "You can, Vex, you have to. You've had to ever since Percival named you."

"No." Vex shakes her head, but her body is relaxed under Cassandra's hands. She can't resist the hunt either, even as she leans further down to cup Cassandra's face in shaking hands. Cassandra can feel her too-quick heartbeat in her palms. "You don't deserve that, no one does. I won't run you through the woods like some animal —"

"Not like an animal." Cassandra bites her lip. "Like a ..." _Like a lover? Like a sacrifice? Like a girl who was born too late to be human at all?_ "Like devotion," she says, and wonders if Vex will fill in the things unsaid. "Yours, to Whitestone. Mine, to those who would rule the city that built me."

Vex's right hand trails down her cheek, her neck, past the scars of Sylas' teeth to cover Cassandra's heart. "And am I to kill you then, Lady Cassandra? Return you to the earth that would swallow your lineage whole? I can't imagine you in a crypt, somehow." She trails off, her eyes flickering away from Cassandra's gaze for a moment, and there is no relief in their absence. "Or is it just about the Hunt?" Vex asks, suddenly sharper. "Shall I run and make you run until the demons behind us no longer draw breath?"

Her words hold a weight Cassandra can't name, and she knows with a sudden rush of certainty that whatever her brother's motives in titling Vex'ahlia, _this_ is why Vex is the new mistress of the Grey Hunt. "Well." She swallows hard, turns her head to press a kiss to Vex's palm. "That's up to you, isn't it?"

 

**

 

 _the warning's spelling out your name_ _;_

 

Cassandra's heart, she thinks, is more secrets than blood these days. How else could she still be here, nothing like the ashen-faced young men and women who don't leave the castle anymore but with whom she shares a neck that aches with the memory of Sylas' teeth, a body that yearns for Delilah's cold hands even when the snow falls?

She hasn't been to the forest since Delilah died. At first she simply hadn't wanted to face the stares of the people — _her_ people, and sometimes the enormity of that feels more suffocating than any of the Briarwoods' charms — but after the arrival of the Conclave her safety had taken on a new priority.

Well, she thinks, standing now at the edge of the treeline, they'll just have to learn to manage without her. Salda had been a great help in getting the Council operational, and Cassandra doesn't have to see the outcome of the Hunt to know Vex will be a wonderful addition to Whitestone's government.

Vex.

Vex had left her kneeling in the library, muttering something about needing to talk to Percy or Zahra or both, and the restlessness that's settled under Cassandra's skin had banished any thought she may have had about returning to her paperwork. She knows Vex better than she knows some of her brother's friends, knows that Vex had nearly fallen twice atop the ziggurat and, in an improbable kindness, never once blamed Cassandra. When Percival had told her he was naming Vex Mistress of the Grey Hunt, she had been almost relieved. Far better to fall to Vex than to one of the Briarwoods' nobles, she had thought, though there was no little surprise that Percival wanted to resurrect that particular Whitestone tradition at the end of the world.

Now, with the dragons gone and the knowledge that Percival hadn't known what the title meant, she's much less sure how to feel.

The forest isn't silent, but Cassandra is too familiar with too many kinds of life to draw comfort from the unseen creatures chattering away in the treetops as she walks forward. _Will it hurt to die?_ she wonders, fingers skipping from tree trunk to tree trunk as she lets her feet choose their own paths. It had hurt the first time, watching the world fade knowing Percival was too much of a coward to leave it with her.

But after that ... after that it hadn't, not really. Death was soft and quiet and sometimes even pleasurable, in the nowhere place between the soft sheets of her parents' bed and the smooth skin of Delilah's hands, one tight around her throat and the other deft and clever between her thighs. And Delilah was always so _kind_ afterwards, with sweets and trinkets and murmured reassurances that she was _so good, so, so good Cassandra, a perfect lady to unlock the entire world for us, you have such a great destiny awaiting you and I am here to lift you, I promise —_

Cassandra chokes on the memory and sinks to the ground, burning fever-hot though Delilah's hands had ever been cold. She tips her head back against the tree trunk, closes her eyes tight against the dizzying swirl of new leaves chasing the sky above her. She hasn't seen a summer in — Whitestone hasn't seen summer since —

 _Since before Delilah,_ part of her mind fills in, but that was so many years, so many lives ago that it seems impossible any Cassandra ever knew the sun unchallenged.

She was supposed to have fifteen summers before the Hunt came for her, but that year the Briarwoods had come instead. This now feels the first and fifteenth and twentieth all at once, and even in the shade of the trees Cassandra feels burned raw by the sun even under the layers of her clothes. She unbuttons her coat and shirt with shaking fingers, shivers as the lace collar scrapes across her scarred neck.

Bared to the sun like this her skin feels strung taut across her body, far too small for the life's blood Sylas could never fully drain from her. She trails her fingers up and down her chest and stomach, marvelling at her skin's smooth wholeness, shivering as she flattens a palm against her nipple. Ghosts own every castle room and shadows walk in every footstep, but Cassandra's pleasure is once again hers alone.

Until the Hunt, and until Vex catches her, and Cassandra can't hold back a moan at the thought of her surrender. The Hunt, the _chase_ won't start for a month at least, but she can feel the magic and the _wanting_ already.

Delilah had only ever been half a choice, shame and desire alike spiraling through blood and robbing her of any words but _please, please_ as Delilah's lips caressed her skin, soothing Sylas's marks and rebuilding Cassandra into something wholly new. And still she had wanted Delilah's love for five years, as genuine as it was twisted, out of terror and her body's conditioned craving and things she still doesn't want to name.

The Hunt was never even that much of a choice — _destiny_ , her mother had said, and when Delilah had used the same word to talk of the Whispered One Cassandra had heard _freedom_ — but now the thought of Vex makes her long for it. Vex, who would be nothing but flashes of green and black and grey between the trees as Cassandra ran.

Vex, who would find her at the end flushed and panting, would maybe even kiss her before demanding everything Cassandra had to give.

Vex, who would have a light in her eyes and magic in her fingertips and a hold on Cassandra's heart like nothing else she's ever known or wanted.

Vex, who would walk ten paces away, after, would draw her bow and leave Cassandra's last vision one of beauty.

Vex, who would —

Cassandra comes back to herself with a gasp, eyes open and hand between her legs, heart pounding as if it hoped to break free from her chest. It's not an unfamiliar sensation — she's woken up from countless dreams like this — but always in her chambers. Never quite like this, never somewhere where there was any chance someone would see. She shifts uneasily, already slick against her fingertips between her thighs.

Cassandra bites her lip, knowing already the fight against the familiar twist of arousal in the pit of her stomach is a useless one. Like this, exposed, she feels like she did the first few months with Delilah — strange and delighted and _wrong_ , part of something that should never happen and that she should never want, yet something she could never have said no to even had she wanted.

(A year free of Delilah's magic and she knows her first shameful, broken _yes_ at the start of her seventeenth summer came from her own reckless traitor heart and not from any charms at all, and that seems the more impossible of admissions.)

Cassandra bends her knees and spreads her legs, chokes back a gasp as she lets her fingers play across her clit. There's a loneliness to her pleasure now that she hasn't been able to wholly shake since Delilah's death, and she's not sure she wouldn't trade it for the knot of feelings she spent years hiding from. But here, half-naked in the forest, there's an element of certainty she's never felt before.

 _Destiny_ , her mother had said. Maybe the Hunt had never let her go, had pulled her back from anything Delilah could have shaped.

There are three years of Delilah's kisses marked into her skin, yet now when Cassandra comes hard around her own fingers, she sees only Vex's face.

 

**

 

_stalk the senses, come the beast ;_

 

There's a fear that clings to Percy in Whitestone now that it lives again, one that stalks the edges of his arrogant nobility much more carefully than the cruel cold terror of revenge did not even a year ago. He's a nervous thing under his finery, but whether he fears himself or his city or himself _in_ his city, Vex isn't sure. She had been hunted in Syngorn, by elven cruelties and her own longing for home, but she thinks that whatever is following Percy now has much more weight and much less form.

Still, when she finds him in a hallway and demands he finally, finally tell her of the Hunt — _because Cassandra did, Percy, and the fact that you would ... and you wouldn't even tell me ... she's your_ sister _, Percy, how could you_ — and the fear rises to cover anything else in his eyes, she can't find any of the protective care she usually feels for her friend.

"I didn't _know_ ," Percy says for the fifth time in as many minutes. As if that ignorance made anything better, as if pain and terror lost their teeth when named.

(Vex is not sure she feels either, under the magic of the Hunt's name, of _her_ name.)

_Four, three, two, spin, eight, seven, six, five, four, three —_

"Vex, please, just..."

 _— two, one, spin._ "How could you not _know_ , Percy?" She stops at the end of the hall and glares at him. "How could you just leave that out? It's kind of a big deal, don't you think, 'Oh, here's a mansion and a title to help say _fuck you_ to your father, Vex'ahlia, by the way, you have to kill my sister if you really want to earn the title'?"

He has, at least, the grace to blush. "It was a story, Vex! Just one of the weird ghost stories we would tell."

"Whitestone's ghosts _possess people,_ Percival, you were _there!_ " Vex is aware that she must be yelling, but she can't care, not when the guards have strict orders to leave Vox Machina alone, not when Cassandra's life is ... is _hers._

"That's different," he says, but there's the same pleading note in his voice that he always uses whenever he tries to justify scolding Keyleth for her magic moments after using his cloak to incinerate something.

Vex spins around again, but the wall isn't any easier to look at, not with Cassandra's title echoing in her mind. "You know it's not, darling." The endearment sounds hollow, like it never did during even the darkest hours of the fight to reclaim Whitestone.

"It's —" He falls silent at her glare. Normally it's a thrill, seeing him bend so easily to her, but Vex feels as empty as her words. "No, no you're right. Do you ... do you know where my sister is? There's a way to fix this, I'm sure, I'll find ..."

"I'm not sure that's your privilege anymore, darling," Vex says, and the words sound like a deeper truth than she had really meant to tell.

Percy straightens, his nobleman's mask sliding into place like a cloud over the sun. "Very well, then. But you should know I ... I do believe in you, quite a lot, and I think you will make Whitestone proud. Whatever your choice."

He leaves her standing alone, her fists clenched around the urge to run after him, to make him apologise, make him tell her all the right words to _fix this_ without losing anything along the way.

Instead, she counts ten deep breaths, and leaves to find Zahra, and sit far from the suffocating feeling of human nobility that she had never imagined could be more cruel than its elven parallel.

 

**

 

_you create the missing element ;_

 

Zahra knows exactly what she's looking for, of course, brilliant, impossible Zahra who had spent so many weeks of the conclave's reign hidden in the library hunting lore with the same single-minded care she had brought to hunting monsters for the Take. Yet when Vex finds her in the forge, wreathed in the uneartly silver light of her enchanting, and asks about the Hunt, a shadow falls over her face.

"Oh, darling," she says, mouth drawn tight like maybe if she doesn't answer she'll instead be able to heal whatever's brought Vex to her more nervous than she was after she died. "The Hunt's a nasty piece of work, are you sure —"

"I'm beginning to get that impression," Vex sighs. "Zahra, darling, when Percy made me a baroness, he, ah ... he also made me the Mistress of the Grey Hunt."

Zahra drops her hammer.

"I didn't think it meant anything!" Vex says quickly, grabbing Zahra's now shaking hand. "He was always so ... it never seemed like it was meant to be a thing, you know? But then I asked Cassandra this morning and she — and she —"

Zahra immediately wraps her in a hug, pulling Vex down to rest on her shoulder. For a moment Vex just breathes, shocked closer to calm by the warm solidity of Zahra pressed all along her body. "Oh, darling, I know," she whispers. "I know, and I'm sorry he asked this of both of you."

 _He didn't know_ , Vex almost says, but that makes it worse, and instead she says nothing at all, just wraps her hands more firmly in Zahra's sleeves.

"It's okay," Zahra says, pressing a kiss to her head. "Come on. Let's head back to the castle. We'll get some coffee in you, and I'll show you the book I found about the Hunt."

Vex doesn't answer aloud, just lifts her head to kiss Zahra with all the gratitude she's never known how to put into words.

Back in the library, curled on Zahra's lap after a coffee with no small amount of liquor, with books spread across the table in front of them, Vex starts to feel she can blink without the image of Cassandra on her knees flooding the darkenss.

"It's not death, precisely," Zahra says, tapping the only book left open in front of them with one claw-tipped finger. "You have to catch her, that much is clear, and the two of you have to be alone save the beasts of the forests. But after that..."

"After that what?" Vex fidgets unhappily on Zahra's lap, craning her neck as if a changed angle would make the Primordial on the page suddenly comprehensible.

"After that, the seventh child must give of their blood to the huntmistress, and by accepting that gift of devotion the huntmistress shall understand that care of Whitestone and the lands around it has passed to her, as surely as the child's body has."

Blood and titles never could coexist easily, Vex thinks, and she shivers at the memory of her father's eyes. "Give of their blood," she repeats allowed. "How ... how _much_ blood, exactly?"

"Well," Zahra shrugs. "It would hardly be a deal with the fey if they specified, would it?"

Vex thinks of Saundor, of the way Fenthras weeps sap to nourish the trees it grows from the bodies of its kills. _Her_ kills. "Heart's blood," she says softly. "And their love even beyond that. It's what — when I was in the Feywild, and bartered for Fenthras —" She can feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, remnants of the helpless shame that had flooded her when she realised she could fail to protect her friends because she had already given too many of them pieces of her heart.

"Shh, Vex," Zahra murmurs. She strokes her hair, kisses her temple, and Vex relaxes into her arms. "Blood _is_ love, as much as it is life, and you have so much of all three to share. And I know you love Cassandra, like you love so many of us."

_Blood is life, is love, is devotion is care is death..._

And suddenly Vex knows exactly what she has to do. "Zahra," she breathes, wriggling around enough that she can fling her arms around Zahra's neck and kiss her soundly, all her lovely warmth still one of the only promises of a future Vex has ever let herself believe. "Zahra you beautiful, brilliant thing. I have a plan, I think."

Zahra's smile is radiant as she cups Vex's face in her palms. "Of course you do, darling," she says, one hand teasing at the hem of Vex's shirt. "Must you work on it now? Or is there time for me to give you a kiss for luck, first?"

Vex bites her lip, considering a moment. Cassandra was nowhere to be found, and the Hunt, Zahra's books all suggested, needed at least a week's preparation between town and huntmistress and quarry. "A kiss," she decides, giving Zahra just that and sighing happily as her forked tongue flicks at Vex's lips. "And perhaps more."

"Whatever you want, darling," Zahra says, and for the first time since she had broached the subject of the Hunt with Cassandra, Vex feels the cloud over her heart lift.

 

**

 

_close my eyes afraid to stay ;_

 

The Raven Queen's temple is so dark and quiet Cassandra feels like she's the only person in the world. There's a thin glow from the candles left burning at the feet of Her small carved statue, and when Cassandra places her hand over the open flames her palm feels damp with the scent of blood.

Cassandra kneels, somewhat at a loss for words. "I've never seen you before, you know," she says quietly. The candle flames flutter with her breath, but there's no indication anyone else has heard. "All those years, all those deaths ... I should have known Delilah's future wasn't really for me."

Still nothing. Cassandra isn't sure if she should be glad. "Well," she says, when the silence has stretched on too long. "I suppose I'll see you tomorrow, then. My true fate." She half-laughs at herself, words as casual as if she were planning to meet Allura for tea.

Still nothing. Cassandra stands, feeling foolish, and nearly screams as she hits something — some _one_ — unyielding.

"Sorry!" Vax says, steadying her with careful hands on her waist. "Sorry, Cassandra, there's usually no one else in here — I wasn't going to say anything, I just —"

"Is She nice?" Cassandra asks, before she can help herself. "The Raven Queen, when I meet Her after the Hunt, is She ... will She be kind?"

Vax sighs and runs his hands through his hair, the soft chimes of beads and bone filling the small room. "Gods don't really work in kind, Cass. She's loving, in Her way. But Cassandra ..." He trails off, suddenly serious, and Cassandra holds her breath. "Have you thought about what my sister's said?"

He doesn't have to say anything else. Vex has been asking her to talk more about the Hunt all week, full of stories about the wording of bargains and the possibility of other endings, and Cassandra is so tired. "No," she says wearily. "Vex means well, I know she does, but it doesn't matter. My fate is the Hunt, and I welcome it. You should understand, it's why I came here."

Vax reaches out slowly, carefully, and takes her hands. "Look, I know this is not really my business, and Sarenrae knows there are parts of the Hunt ritual with you and my sister that I _really_ don't want to know about but ... fate doesn't always mean death, you know? I spent a long time thinking it did, and the greatest gift She gave me was understanding that wasn't true. And I want ... I want you to know that too, okay?"

Cassandra squeezes his hands and smiles sadly. "Thank you, Vax. You're not right in this case, but ... thank you."

She slips from his grasp and out the door before he can say anything else. But as she makes her way back up to the castle, she wonders for the first time if she should have at least let Vex have her say.

 

**

 

_can i be your soldier with a knife?_

 

The morning of the Hunt dawns warm and clear, the scent of Whitestone's revived gardens light in the air. Vex stands with Cassandra under the Sun Tree, and though nearly the whole town has gathered to see the beginning of their oldest tradition — Vex can see her brother and Keyleth and Zahra in the crowd, tense and hopeful in a way at odds with the town's generalised excitement — she feels desperately alone.

Cassandra is all in white, the better for Vex to find her amidst the trees, and as Percy finishes his speech, Vex thinks she looks more at peace than ever before. Still she asks, "Are you sure, Cassandra?" for what seems the thousandth time in the past week.

"Yes," Cassandra says simply, like she has every time. And then she hesitates. "But, Vex ..."

"Yes, darling?"

"You can tell me, when you catch me. Whatever you've been thinking about, this week, you can tell me then. Right before the end."

Vex takes her hand, lifts it to her lips and presses a kiss to her knuckles. "Of course, dear. That and more. Now ..." Her eyes are fixed on the Whitestone crest banner hanging from the Sun Tree, which flutters gently to the ground as Percy steps back into the crowd. "Run, darling."

Cassandra does.

There's scattered cheers as she makes her way through the town, and Cassandra smiles. This, too, is right, that her people should get to cheer the death of the failed leader who walked so many to their deaths in the rebellions. This year the Hunt is penance too, even if she's the only one who knows.

Quiet falls when she reaches the forest, and she slows to a walk. Vex won't be allowed to follow for another hour, one of the Hunt's pretensions to fairness, and suddenly the forest seems impossibly vast. It smells of earth, of growth, of new life so unlike the town proper that had never quite shaken off the stench of death, only transformed it.

By midday, she's walked far enough to reach the spot of her first death. The ground is soft now, sweeter than the snow that drank the child-Cassandra's blood. Earth that would give, she thinks, as she presses her hand down, down, down into the dirt as if it could swallow her whole body now.

A twig cracks off to the side, and she leaps to her feet. Vex is well trained; if she wished, Cassandra would never hear her coming. But Vex wouldn't want to catch her yet. The ranger knows the Hunt, and the sacrifice knows her mistress.

And so Cassandra runs.

She loses track of time in the forest. For a moment she thinks she remembers it has always been this way — strangely not-quite-like the rest of Whitestone, when she was six years old stumbling home with grass stains on her knees to be scolded by the priests at the Zenith for being gone past the sunset though she knows she was hardly gone an hour.

And then she blinks, and something around her shivers, and she is walking through the deserted centre of Whitestone hand in hand with Delilah as the snow swirls around them and the clouded sun stands still and their feet make no sound on the stones.

Blinks again, and the weeping branches of the willow tree at the river's mouth hang open for her as the summer-night stars whisper _wait, she will come._

Cassandra has been loved in dreams and half-lives, but it is only when she turns her head to find Vex kneeling next to her, Fenthras strung but no arrows in sight, that she begins to wonder what it would be like to be loved in life, _by_ life.

"Cass ..." Vex says. She looks far more weary than simply a day in the forest could account for.

"It's all right, Vex," Cassandra says softly. "I only started wanting the Hunt when Percival told me it was going to be you, you know. One of the very first things I was able to want, after Delilah died."

They're so close even her tired nearly-human eyes can see Vex's breath, like mist in the starlight's chill. "I've died so many times, Vex, it's okay. Let the trees take me, for Whitestone. Let them _grow_."

" _No_ ," Vex says abruptly, and before Cassandra can say anything else, Vex is kissing her. It's so light, a tentative burning brush of her lips against Cassandra's, yet Cassandra feels the messy, contradictory knot of wanting in her chest flare to meet Vex's fire as she opens her mouth.

"To all things a season," Vex says when she pulls back, and her voice is shaking. She's still holding Fenthras, Cassandra realises a moment too late, and the vines carved deep into the wood seem to shed a dim gold light. "I would know if it was yours, darling."

Cassandra closes her eyes, licks her lips and tastes the remnants of Vex's kiss on her mouth. Delilah had kissed and killed her for a god, once, and though the Hunt paid tribute to nothing so singular, it feels a fitting end. "The Hunt _is_ my time, my lady. As it is for all seventh children of Whitestone. Please don't make this harder than it has to be."

 _Please kiss me again, first_ , she might say were she a little more selfish.

"Cassandra." Vex fumbles for her hand, wraps her fingers around Fenthras' grip. The wood glows under her hand, warm and solid and _alive_.

"What —" she says, and her voice is hardly a whisper.

"See?" Vex asks breathlessly. "Alive, just like you. Cass ... there's so many ways to die." Her voice is heavy with the weight of stories Cassandra doesn't know how to ask for. "I made a promise to a god, once. If it was time for you to see her, trust me I'd know."

The first time Cassandra awoke in the forest, there had been arrows in her chest. The second time, she had been a coward, and the arrows were in her back. The third and fourth times, there had been pillows under her neck and the scent of perfume in her hair. After that, she had stopped keeping track.

She's never woken up in the Raven Queen's shrine, though she wonders if it's just a matter of time.

"I've seen my brother with the Raven Queen, Cassandra," Vex says, as if she's read her thoughts. Maybe she has, the lines between Cassandra and Vex, hunter and sacrifice blurred and gone in the forest. "I've seen her myself, given her my — given her something like what I think the Hunt wants me to take from you. But devotion, it ... it can't be taken like that. Not if it's real."

Cassandra's eyes flick between Vex's face and her hand, fingers still linked with Cassandra's around Fenthras's grip. Real, like so many things had never had to be. "It wouldn't be taking," she says. "I always thought it should, I was always told ... but not with you. I know that now."

 _Just another failure_ , she is too tired to say, but Vex's eyes widen and Cassandra thinks maybe she understands anyway.

"I would serve you, my Lady," Vex says brokenly. "You, darling, not Whitestone. I would protect, and fight, and love —"

Cassandra pulls her hand away. "Vex, no, stop. There's not a difference, that's the _point_. I am my Whitestone, as much as it is me by my blood's right. That's why you hunted me."

Vex shakes her head slowly. "I don't think that's all of it. Zahra showed me the books in the library, about the Hunt."

Cassandra holds her breath. "And?"

"The Hunt asks your body and your blood. Not your life and your death, just ... just that." Her eyes are wide and dark, cheeks flushed unnaturally bright. Cassandra would give almost anything to kiss her again.

"But do you mean ..." She lifts her hand to her mouth, traces the memory of Vex's kiss as Vex licks her lips.

"Yes," Vex breathes. "Unless you want — Darling, if you look me in the eye right now and swear on Whitestone and on Fenthras that you want to die I'll —"

A week, a day ago the answer would have been easy, instinctive. Now, she can't find words, all of them drowned in the tears welling in her eyes. "Ye — I don't know, Vex. I don't know anymore. I'm not afraid, but I want —"

"Oh, Cass." Vex takes Cassandra's face gently in her hands, kisses the bridge of her nose, the corner of her mouth. Cassandra sighs, eyes falling shut. "You said it was up to me, if I was to kill you or just make you run. But it can't be like that, just me. Do you want this, instead, now?"

Cassandra takes a deep, shuddering breath and wills the tears not to fall. "Yes," she says, almost inaudibly, and she tries to will away the shame at choosing this impossible end to the Hunt that curls around the desire in her belly.

(It feels, she thinks, as Vex's mouth meets hers again, as she parts her lips for Vex's tongue, like saying yes to Delilah the first time, and she thinks the thought shouldn't be as comforting as it is.)

Vex lays her out on the grey cloak, and even through her simple white shift Cassandra feels more naked than she ever was in the Briarwoods' bed. "Shit, Cass, you're gorgeous," Vex breathes, kneeling between Cassandra's legs with her hands on her thighs like she still can't quite believe she's been given permission to touch.

"I'm..." She doesn't believe her, not really, but Delilah had never liked it when she refused compliments. But Vex isn't Delilah; her desire is her own, as Cassandra's is now her own. It should be embarrassing, how much Cassandra wants her even without the Hunt's energy binding them. "I wanted this before the Hunt," she blurts out, and feels her cheeks burning with the thoroughly un-ladylike admission. "You, I mean. It's only fair that you know."

"Oh, darling." Vex leans down to kiss her again, soft and undemanding behind the blue-black curtain of her hair. "I'm so glad," she murmurs against Cassandra's lips. "This is about you, after all. All about you. Is there anything you don't want?"

Cassandra's breath catches in her throat, her mind suddenly flooded with thoughts of what Vex must have endured to know to ask, even within the ritual. Part of her doesn't want to know. Another part wonders what it would be like, to share her memories with another. "No biting," she says, shoving those thoughts firmly aside and trying to meet Vex's eyes. "No restraints. Don't call me _child_. Um ..." She hesitates over the last, but Vex just waits, not a hint of judgement in her gaze. "You can cut me, a little. I know you have to, for the ritual ..."

There's a flicker in Vex's eyes, a _but I don't want to hurt you_ left unsaid, but Vex just nods. "Of course. And if you say stop, I stop, okay? No title is worth hurting you."

Cassandra shakes her head — hurt is worth titles and more, she had known that even before Delilah — but it's not the time for it. Instead she lifts her skirt, bares herself to Vex's gaze. The night isn't truly cold, but it's enough that the shock of the air against her cunt sends delicious shivers down her spine.

"Oh, _fuck_ ," Vex breathes. She traces one finger through Cassandra's curls and presses feather-light against her clit.

Cassandra gasps, arching up into Vex's hands. She hadn't realised just how much she was aching for this — but of course, she thinks, as Vex cups her gently and teases at her entrance with the tip of a finger. How many times had she died in Delilah's bed, fallen apart in a climax she thought would never end or lain broken in a more true death, the uncertainty only driving her pleasure higher?

The difference, Cassandra thinks, as Vex leans down to kiss her, teeth digging into her lip as two fingers fill her, is that while Delilah raised her from the fall Vex would never let her hit the ground.

And then Vex _moves_ , fucks her so gently it can't possibly be because of the Hunt, and Cassandra loses all thought of Delilah. "Vex," she whispers against her mouth, "Vex — blood, Vex, you promised — I need —" Need _something_ , she wants to say, but she's lost the thought of that too, as Vex keeps up her maddeningly slow pace, slides down her body to drag her teeth across Cassandra's nipples through her thin dress and makes her moan at the slide of leather and wool against her bare legs and stomach.

Cassandra squirms under Vex's ministrations, the heat of her mouth and the warmth of her fingers. Vex doesn't hold her down, barely holds her legs open with her free hand, and Cassandra revels in the terrifying freedom of being able to chase every thrust of Vex's fingers.

There's the cold press of steel against her hip, and Cassandra whines at the loss as Vex's fingers slip from her. "Are you ready, darling?"

"Since before you knew," Cassandra manages, breathless through the haze of arousal. She meets Vex's eyes with difficulty, and finds them sharp and wanting and not scared at all.

She doesn't feel the cut, just the warmth of her blood and the soft brush of Vex's tongue chasing it across her skin. Sylas had taken her blood distantly, uninterested in anything but a meal; Delilah had only ever cared to play with much less messy deaths. But to _give_ , to give to _Vex_ —

— _Oh_ , Cassandra thinks dimly, _so this is devotion, before it tears you alive._

Her hand scrambles for the knife — _at my throat, Vex, more, more, I take it back, Vex, I want you_ and — but Vex is already flinging the knife far beyond both of their reach, and all that comes out of her mouth is _Vex, more._

She thinks Vex says something in reply, or maybe she just laughs, and then there is blood on her stomach and Vex's mouth on her cunt and she is _alive alive alive_ —

Cassandra does not remember closing her eyes, but when she opens them again Vex's fingers are resting against her mouth, long and thin and coated in evidence of Cassandra's pleasure.

"Blood and body," Vex says, and Cassandra can feel the arcane energy crackling across the words as if they were living things. "You're mine now, my lady. As I would be yours."

And Cassandra smiles, and she smiles, and she smiles.

(There is everything still left to run from, yet now a home on the horizon.)

**Author's Note:**

> section titles;  
> (i) phideaux; micro softdeathstar  
> (ii) ionnalee; not human  
> (iii) phideaux; micro softdeathstar  
> (iv) xandria; sisters of the light  
> (v) the third & the mortal; atupoema  
> (vi) ionnalee; samaritan


End file.
